How to Scan and Print Pictures from a Computer

Mango

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posted on 12 years ago — updated on 1 second ago

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Taking pictures is too easy. But scanning and printing pictures might be hard. If you want to scan and print pictures, read this easy article.

Things You Should Know

Place your photo on the flatbed area of your scanner.
Crop and save the image on your computer.
Preview your picture and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+P to print the photo.

Scanning a Photo

Connect your scanner to your computer. Although most of today's scanners connect via USB cords, some older scanners connect to the serial and parallel ports on most computers. Plug the smaller end of the USB cord into your scanner's slot, and the bigger end into your PC.

Power the scanner and turn the scanner on. Plug in the power cord to the scanner as well as the other end into the electrical outlet , and turn the device on. If you've already connected the scanner to your computer to grab the drivers to run the scanner to your computer, you can turn each item on in whatever order you feel to be most comfortable; however, if not, prepare to turn on the scanner once you are logged into your computer's user account.

Place whatever you want to scan into the scanner. Make sure that the picture is face down onto the scanner glass. Almost all scanners will have tiny insignias mentioning in which corner the picture will need to be placed. Place it a teensy-weensie bit below this area. If the scanner has what's called an automatic document feeder, do not use this. Using these, on top of not being able to re-obtain the finished pictures, will also cause the pictures to jam the machine and the picture will also smudge. Only use the flatbed area of your scanner to obtain scans of your pictures.

Follow the directions from the scanner's manual as well as the scanner's third-party software to ensure you are pressing the right buttons. Sometimes the button will be called "Scan" and other times it may be called something else entirely. Sometimes, pressing the Scan button on your scanner will launch your scanning software, while other times, you can open your software where you can import pictures via your scanner and scan using this. Do not take your picture from the scanner flatbed portion. Most scanners will need to rescan a select portion and save that area (as you'll see later).

Crop the previewed image if the scanning software you use offers you to preview the scan before you save the image. Make sure that any of the white background that was used isn't showing in your finished image, and remember to rotate the image if possible.

Save the image. Most often doing so, this will take a secondary scan of the item as to scan only those areas.

Printing a Photo

Launch the program that you use to view your pictures. Sometimes this can be based off your operating system and sometimes this is a third-party software (such as Adobe Photoshop) or sometimes it's another program entirely different.

Open the file of the picture you saved previously in this program. Most often times, this will be done with a quick keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+O, but you'll need to refer to your program documentation menus to ensure this can be done in your program, as not all programs use the same methods to open the Open window.

Preview your picture, as you turn on your printer (if it isn't initially on). Make sure that the picture is really the one you want to view. Make any final adjustments to the picture to make the picture even better. If you aren't a photo-expert and can trust your program to make good decisions, use an Auto-Adjust setting to fix up your photos in edit mode. If you can't, you can manually adjust them with sliders and within the program boundaries until they are to exactly the style you'd like them to be.

Save your file to ensure the most current picture will print, if you've made any changes.

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+P or whatever keyboard shortcut the print menu can be found in.

Select the printer it should be printing on, as well as any other document style specifications that might need to be set. This may include the amount of copies that need to be printed, as well as type of paper that is installed in the printer. Some printers will need you to select other options such as borderless printing and the like, but each printer is different, so follow the directions to your particular printer to find out what that printer is capable of printing.